


The Miri Factor

by Thanfiction



Series: Daydverse [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: DAYDverse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:05:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thanfiction/pseuds/Thanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The path from childhood to adulthood is treacherous, particularly for those who must take it too quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Alternative Factor

**Author's Note:**

> Parallels the events during Chapter 10 of Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness.

"I hate being unplugged for so long, you know? I mean, don't get me wrong, school's  _wicked_ great, even this year, because it's sort of powered up, and we've totally got it, but if I don't get to play Dark Forces II within about ten seconds of getting through that door, I'm going mental. You can have the Nintendo first if you want it, though." Dennis was chattering eagerly, but Colin barely heard him, his pulse speeding as he scanned the almost-empty platform for the hundredth time, hoping that he had please, please been stupid and paranoid, that they'd just been held up in traffic, that they were just late.

The crowd had thinned dangerously, though, and if they stayed much longer, they'd be alone and still on the magical side of the platform, away from the safety of strangers, and that would be worse than just going for it. He grabbed Dennis' sleeve, jerking his head towards the exit. "C'mon, D, let's go."

His little brother didn't hesitate to follow, dragging his trunk along behind, but his face was deeply lined in reproachful confusion. "Colin, we're supposed to wait here. Mum and Dad aren't -"

"They said they might be late today," he lied brusquely. "We've waited an hour like they wanted us to, and now we're going to have a cab home."

The younger boy's eyes widened, impressed. "They gave you money for that? It's bloody expensive all the way out past Ealing, why don't we take the tube?"

They were being followed, was why. The bloke was in plain clothes, not black robes, but Colin recognized him from the platform, and not in the good way. They were being followed, and while the station was safer than the lonely platform, a cab all to themselves was a lot safer than a tight-packed, jostling underground where people got attacked sometimes in just the normal go of things. He didn't say it, though. The last thing he needed when he was already stressing this much was for Dennis to go spaz. "Because they don't want us fucking about with our trunks," he snapped instead. "But we've got to hurry or all the blacks'll be gone."

Actually, they were far from scarce, though the cabbie reacted much the same a Dennis had when he gave his address, and he had to pull a wad of notes from the pocket of his robes to show before the skeptical arse would even budge away from the pavement. Their tail stayed in the station, making no effort to follow in another cab, and despite a twinge of disappointment that there wasn't going to be a chase, he was actually very glad there wasn't going to be a chase. He looked over at Dennis, who was frowning at him in concern. "Colin, are you okay? You look off."

"I'm fi -" he stopped, catching the eye-roll at his blatant lie before it was even out and grinning fondly, reaching out to ruffle Dennis' hair. "Ok, I'm not fine, but I'll be okay. Got a bit of a headache, think it's from the stuff on the train maybe. Or what Neville said about the stakes being higher while everyone's on holiday."

Dennis nodded solemnly, squeezing his hand in genuine support. "It's gotta be killer for you, ain't it? The stress of it, being the S.K. If there's anything I can do to help, you know you've just needs ask, right?  _Anything._ Like if you want on the computer first to unwind a bit, check out what Harry Knowles's got on the prequels…"

The generosity touched him more deeply than he expected, and Colin had to swallow hard. "Anyone ever told you little brothers are supposed to be pests?"

His answer was a cheeky little shrug and a stuck-out tongue. Colin laughed quietly, shaking his head then leaning it back to rest against the seat. "Really, though, you're right that it's a little like trying to run about with a tauntaun in your pocket. Useful in a pinch, but it weighs you down a bit. Mind if I doze a bit 'til we get home?"

"'Course. I'll wake you."

He didn't sleep at all, actually, not had he expected to. It had just meant that he didn't have to answer anything without hurting Dennis' feelings by ignoring him, and he needed to think. Oh, God, he needed to think. Why couldn't they live farther away?

There was a part of him that was trying to race ahead, come up with a thousand contingency plans for what if this and do you think that, but he forced them down. One step at a time. This was not the time for guns blazing, not when backup might not even come, the cops were questionable, and he had Dennis to think of. Sure, he was fourteen, no baby, and could take care of himself in a fight, but it would be worse than irresponsible to get him into one, particularly if it involved Death Eaters. If Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and the Commander  _together_ had gotten their butts handed to them, he had no illusions about just the Creevey brothers.

One step at a time, and step one was to check the house. Keep the cab waiting, definitely. It'd cost more, but it would be worth it to have a getaway vehicle and not be stuck trying to run for it down a suburban street if there was someone waiting for him that wasn't of the parental variety.

Alone or with Dennis? This one was trickier. On the one hand, he didn't want to separate, that was too obviously a Very Bad Idea. On the other, he had absolutely no idea what might be in the house. It might just be their parents who had gotten the date wrong or forgotten or gotten wrapped up in something with the 'zine, but he put that at about the same odds as Voyager going for fifteen seasons. Even with the fit new Borg.

It could be just abandoned, an eerie Marie Celeste movie set of their lives. Or ransacked, had at by whatever tossers had figured out there was no one to object to the liberation of the computer or the television or the gaming consoles. It was also possible - maybe even more likely, if he was brutally honest with himself - that he was going home to something a little more Hellraiser than Twilight Zone, and he shuddered inadvertently as he though of some of the things he'd heard about his aunt's favorite games.

Dennis would be staying in the cab. The cabbie would still be there, so he wouldn't be alone, and if someone was going to find Mum and Dad like  _that,_ it sure as hell didn't need to be anyone but him.

"Colin? Colin wake up, we're here." He opened his eyes, blinking in a moment's disorientation before he recognized the familiar surroundings of his neighborhood. It seemed like it hadn't been long enough, but maybe he had dozed off a little, or maybe time was just weird right now, relative like Einstein had said. Something about a minute with a beautiful woman or a minute on hot coals…or thinking about finding your parents' dismembered corpses artistically arranged around the living room.

Dennis was already getting out, but Colin grabbed the back of his robes, yanking him down. "Stay here."

"But -"

"STAY. HERE." He had never used that tone with his brother - with anyone - before, and normally the look of hurt and shock would have made him feel guilty, but he was too carefully not feeling anything right now, too carefully not panicking at the state of the front lawn, at the lack of tire tracks in the mud in front of the garage. Colin pulled out his wallet, snatching out another twenty and tossing it onto the front seat. "Wait for me."

If the cabbie said anything, he didn't notice, already shutting the door behind him. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment to center himself. Their lives depended on an absolutely Vulcan state of rationality right now.  _Don't panic._ The familiar, droll instructions made the slightest bit of a smile come to his mouth, and he opened his eyes, squaring his shoulders.  _No bulldozers, at least. Could be worse. You can do this._

The door was locked, of course, and no one answered either the doorbell nor knocking, but the spare key was still under the Tardis in the front garden, and it still fit the lock. Which meant, at least, that it hadn't been so long that the bank had gotten the house and changed the locks, but it also meant that whatever he was going to find had probably not been disturbed since it had happened. Feeling Dennis' eyes on him from the waiting cab like a physical burn in the back of his shoulders, he opened the door and stepped inside.

The smell. Oh,  _God,_ the smell.

Colin fell to his knees before the door had even shut behind him, gagging desperately. It was like being punched in the face, this horrible, unholy reek, and he panted through his mouth, trying not to choke on it, trying not to smell it, but it was thick enough to  _taste,_ filling his lungs, his entire body, and he barely managed to grab the bucket they used for umbrellas before he lost the fight with his stomach. He had never vomited so hard in his life; deep, heaving waves that clenched his gut and burned his throat long after it was empty, leaving him shaking, eyes watering, trying not to cry at the loss of one control that was so precariously close to taking all the others with it.

But the clock was running, and not just the one on the meter outside. He didn't know if entering the house would have alerted anyone, and he forced himself to his feet. The dry heaves were still making him walk doubled-over like an old man, one sleeve clutched over his face as much to catch anything that might still be coming up as to pretend anything could ward off the stink that was now mixed even more terribly with the sour bite of sick.

Vulcan, he had to be Vulcan about this, but it was strangely easier than he'd thought as he made his way down the front hall and into the living room. Part of him knew it was shock, but he wasn't going to nitpick right now, because anything that made this all unfold around him from this kind of strange distance was a welcome friend indeed.

No scene of carnage in the living room, but the noise he had assumed at first to be an appliance left running or static on the television was nothing mechanical at all. It was flies, tens of thousands of them, covering every surface and rising like a plague to swirl through the air when he disturbed them by entering the room. The mold-covered, fallen-apart remains of what had once been Chinese take-away on the table. The lights on the VCR were out. He tested the switch. No power. More than thirty days, then, but less than ninety.

The kitchen was worse. The loss of power had meant all the food in the fridge had spoiled, and though he didn't dare open the door, a thick brown sludge of rotted stuff had oozed out the bottom, and it was writhing white with maggots that would soon turn into more of the fat, iridescent bastard cousins that were all over the counters, the dishes crusted in the bracken water of the sink, the white-haired bowl of used to be bananas.

No time. No time. They obviously weren't here alive, so now it was just a matter of whether there were bodies or not, and to get anything he could salvage that might make it a little easier for them to survive. Food was obviously right out. Colin gave only a glance to the rec room, just enough to see that no corpses were sprawled in front of the computer or work table, then he headed upstairs, hurrying now, almost running.

Nothing in Dennis' room. Grab the Green Lantern bag from the bottom drawer of the dresser; it was biggest. His winter coat, a handful of underwear, two pairs of jeans, a hoodie, a couple tshirts, his autographed Wil Wheaton foil card in its frame off the side table, his stuffed monkey from when he was a baby. Nothing in his room. Grab some more clothes, all his autographs too, especially the Stan Lee Spiderman sketch. They were worth money. Money was going to be very important.

Nothing in the guest room. Nothing in the bathroom. Just more flies; flies everywhere, and he knew he should have checked Mum and Dad's room first, because it was the most logical place for them to be if not downstairs, except that he didn't trust that he'd have been able to turn back and get things they needed if it was very bad. His hand paused on the doorknob, his heart pounding. Maybe he didn't have to do this. It was obvious what had happened. Did he really need to see it? The horn of the cab blared, startling him, but it also set his decision. There was no way he was going to look Dennis in the eyes and say 'I don't know,' say he'd chickened out, deny his brother even what little closure and comfort he might salvage from all this. He pushed the door open, holding his breath against what he expected to be an entire new dimension of smell from the bodies that were going to be in there.

It was empty. Colin stopped, dumbfounded. The bed was empty, there weren't even hardly any flies in here, and it looked like they'd just gotten up from a nap and forgot to make it up. He walked closer as if in a dream, putting out a hand to touch the edge of the duvet and make sure it was all real. No bodies. His parents were just…gone.

Except now he could see that those weren't just the shadows of touseled sheets. Those were smears of something dark and dried, even if not much, and on the wallpaper above the bed, that wasn't a shadow either. It had faded, no longer glowing, just a charred remnant of what had been so boldly emblazoned to mark whatever awful thing had happened there, but there was still no questioning the skull and snake. They were dead, then. Really, really dead.

Someone turned away from the bed and went calmly to the fire box in the closet. Someone turned the dials to 1701 and got out the packet with their birth certificates, passports, and other vital papers and tucked them into the bag. Someone closed the door behind him and went downstairs, wondering vaguely if he should leave a note. Colin watched the someone - who seemed oddly to be using his body - do these things, but he was back on the platform not an hour ago, but months ago, feeling them warm and alive and hugging him goodbye for what was supposed to have been only until Christmas. He was back in the Great Hall watching the mail come and biting his lip against the growing suspicion. He was back in the common room telling Neville that this had happened with no real idea that it would mean this.

The someone got almost all the way out of the house before Colin saw it. Only a little bit of something orange and fuzzy was visible from behind the bucket he had puked in, and he shouldn't have looked. He thought he'd been prepared to find the bodies of his parents, and maybe he had, but this he hadn't expected. The maggots had finished their work, deflating the belly opened and emptied, gouging the eye sockets and stripping the flesh from the teeth that grinned at him through the half-mummified skull that still had too much tabby fur clinging too many places, the collar stained and sagged around the skeletal column of the neck.

Colin ran. Flinging the door open, halfway down the front walk before he remembered and it was the hardest thing he'd ever done to turn back, grab the Green Lantern bag, slam the door shut behind him, fuck locking it, fuck the key, he was never going back, he was yanking the cab door open and flinging himself down onto the seat and not, not _not_ crying or screaming just keeping it together somehow, and thank sweet holy mother of Lucas the someone came through again. The voice was his, technically, but impossibly calm, at most a little annoyed as he leaned forward, barely breathing hard as he swept the fringe out of his face. "Our parents had to leave town unexpectedly, but they've left us a note with instructions for the night until our aunt and uncle get here tomorrow. Would you mind taking us to the nearest reasonably priced motel?"

Then the someone was gone, leaving him shaking, trying not to gag again, biting the inside of his mouth until it bled to not cry, to not scream, to not do or say anything at all as he fell back into his seat again, clinging to the bag like a life preserver. Dennis pulled at his sleeve, but he shook his head sharply, not opening his eyes, not wanting to see whatever look was on his brother's face because it was too likely to be too much. "Shut up, D. I'll tell you when we get there."

"But, Colin, you -"

"I said shut up."

Dennis, thankfully, shut up.


	2. That Which Survives

The first real test of doing something adult, and he'd gone and made a tit sandwich of it. Colin tilted his head back under the showerhead, letting the water stream down his face from the third time now he'd washed his hair. He could only hope that it would get rid of the smell, though he admitted it was probably his imagination that it was still there. At this point, he was just stalling, trying to avoid going back out there where Dennis was still waiting patiently to find out what the hell had happened back there.

If he'd been trying to fool himself that Dennis believed his bullshit about their parents going out of town, that had ended promptly enough at the front desk. Mad how you could watch something as simple as checking in to a motel be done so many times both in life and movies and still cock it up. Maybe it was that they looked so young, maybe it was that they'd been paying cash or stared at the form the clerk presented him as if it was written in Ferengi, but he'd wound up in the manager's office and with the cops very nearly called on them both until he'd finally broken down and sobbed out a story so close to the truth it still burned.

_We just got back from boarding school, sir, and no one was home. Our parents have disappeared. My aunt and uncle don't want to call the police until they've checked out a few more possibilities, but they can't get here tonight and so they just told us to find a place. I haven't told my brother yet. Please, sir, just one night, we promise we won't cause trouble, but we've got nowhere else to go!_

Damn the man for looking like someone's grandfather. Damn him for the tea and the kindness with which he'd asked if they needed anything. Damn him for sending pizza. Damn him to hell for making him feel like he could say everything, tell him about the flies and the Dark Mark and the DA and give it all to someone old enough to know what to do with it when he couldn't, not at all, and the so close hurt so much more than not believing him at all and turning them out on the streets would have.

"FREEEDOOOM!" Mel Gibson's tortured scream broke through the sound of the water and his own hard breathing, yanking him out of his thoughts and reminding him that Braveheart was almost over, and that meant he'd have to finally answer Dennis' still-unspoken questions. He didn't want to. He wanted to run away and hide forever somewhere that none of this had ever happened, but there was no choice.

With a deep sigh, Colin turned off the water and grabbed a towel, carefully not looking at the small, round scar left by the Fidelius on the center of his chest as he dried himself off. The clothes from the house still smelled too bad - they'd have to wear their uniforms until he could find a laundry - but he knew that his hands were shaking so hard he'd almost certainly pop a button or tear something, so he just wrapped the rough terrycloth around his waist for the time being as he leaned over the basin.

He was nauseated, but he hadn't eaten any of the pizza Dennis had torn into with such gusto, and there was nothing left to throw up. Somehow, that seemed very unfair. He wiped a circle in the mirror's fog, staring into his own eyes as if the answer to how to do this would be somewhere in the starburst details of grey and blue. Except it wasn't, and he felt a sudden, irrational surge of hatred that the face staring back at him was so much a  _boy's,_ as if harder lines or stubbled cheeks would hold the conviction he so badly needed.

Colin spun away from the mirror, bracing both hands against the towel bar and closing his eyes to feel the still-surprising strength in his shoulders and arms as the muscles tensed. "Come on, Creevey," he whispered desperately, "you can do this. Alexander the Great had already founded his first colony by your age, you can talk to D. and keep your mouth shut about the shit at school. They're counting on you. They're all counting on you. Don't you dare let them down."

A deep breath, a splash of icy water to strip the redness from his eyes, and there was nothing else to do. The credits were just starting to roll on the tiny, cheap television as he stepped out of the bathroom, and Dennis looked up from where he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, frowning at his older brother. "I thought you were growing gills in there."

"Nah," he shrugged, trying to look casual as he sat on the end of the bed. "Why would I do that? Aquaman sucks."

Dennis didn't laugh. Instead, he stood up, pushing the pizza box out of the way to sit next to Colin, putting a hand on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. "Look, Colin, you're the S.K. for the DA, not for us. You can still tell me anything. Whatever happened back at the house, you knew it was coming, didn't you? That's why you made me wait in the cab and why you were so weird, and the way you came flying out of there, I was kind of expecting you to be chased by orcs."

He shook his head dully, the slow realization that there was no getting out of this sinking in like sinking under. "No orcs. Flies. No orcs."

Even though he couldn't look at him, he could hear Dennis take a deep breath, and there was a long pause before the question came, so tightly controlled that it sounded almost robotic. "Where's Mum and Dad?"

"They're -" His voice betrayed him, cracking high and then refusing altogether, and he bit his lip, shaking his head so harshly that the drops of water from his hair spattered his knees like the tears he absolutely could not allow. " - I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Jesus, I'm so sorry."

He'd grabbed the hand from his shoulder without even realizing it, and now Dennis was trying to pull away from him, his eyes huge, his face pale in the very picture of every emotion that he'd not wanted to happen. "Stop it! You're hurting me!"

Colin yanked back in horror, a fresh wave of crawling, chill nausea shuddering over him as he saw the deep red, sure-to-bruise fingerprints in Dennis' wrist as he cradled it to his chest, watching Colin like some strange, dangerous alien. He reached out again, wanting to make it better, wanting to apologize, to comfort, but the quick leap backwards, the cold utility of the defensive kata shamed him to a halt as effectively as a slap to the face. "D, I didn't mean to, I just…"

"What the fuck happened in there? Are you even - what's the name of the Lurian on DS9?" It wasn't a question, it was an order, and right now, he was almost grateful for the suspicion, the anger, the strange reversal that had his brother poised to fight him, because it reminded him that Dennis wasn't a child any more, not really, and maybe they could at least be in this together. Maybe they could make it.

"Morn," he replied, trying to keep his tone and posture unthreatening as he stood, taking only a moment to check that the knot of the towel at his hip was still secure. "Anagrammed from Norm, the barfly on Cheers. He's in the background of every scene at Quark's. It's me, Dennis. You wanted to be Mystique when you were little until you realized she was always a girl inside. You think Carrie Fisher isn't really that pretty but you wish you could marry Jennifer Lien and you had the first sex dream you 'fessed up about over Ivanova last summer. You made brown belt in half the time I did, and you actually kind of like Chris O'Donnell's Robin and just wish he was written better. You're my brother, and I love you, and I swear on the grave of Jerry Siegel that I would never hurt you on purpose."

Dennis' stance didn't relax at all. If anything, he looked more tense than ever, his voice tighter, higher as he took another half-step back, his eyes like a caged animal. "Where's Mum and Dad?"

"Mum and Dad…"  _God forgive me for this. I have no choice._ He swallowed hard, meeting Dennis' eyes firmly, evenly, trying not to sound cold but still firm enough that it would be beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was so, so not a joke. "Mum and Dad are gone. They're dead."

" _NO!"_ The attack was lightning-fast, but Colin's adrenaline was strung every bit as high, and what advantage his brother had in speed he had in strength. He blocked the blows as quick as they came, letting the hysteria build until a mistake was made, allowing him to throw a reversal that left Dennis pinned, hissing through gritted teeth into the carpet beneath his locked and twisted arm. "You're a  _liar!"_ He spat fiercely. " _It's not true! Don't fucking LIE to me, Colin!"_

"I'm not lying. I wish I was. Oh, fucking hell, Dennis, I wish I was!" He was crying now, big, gulping, messy sobs, but he didn't even care because his grip was still unflinching stone against the tension in the young boy below him that made it so clear he'd get his head kicked in if he budged so much as an inch. "I've known - I've been afraid of it since the letters stopped coming in October, but I didn't say anything 'cause I wanted to be wrong more than I've ever wanted anything!"

" _SHUT UP!"_ Dennis twisted his head, trying to bite, his eyes squeezed shut now as if he could block it all out.

He wished it was possible, wished he could let go and say it was an awful, awful prank and rightfully get the shit kicked out of himself for it and admit it wasn't funny and all and be done if only that could make it true. But it couldn't and it wasn't and he made himself keep going even though he could barely breathe. "They've been dead at least a month. The power's been turned off to the house. Their bodies are gone, but Marmalade's been dead in the hall long enough he's all rotted and the fridge is gone and the power's off and there was blood and a Dark Mark upstairs. They're gone, Dennis, we're fucking orphans now, and we've got to figure out what we're going to do now, because we can't endanger Aunt Marlee and Uncle Joe or Gramma and Gramps, and we've only got about six thou, which won't last nearly as long as it should."

He couldn't hold on any longer, curling away to drop his face into his hands in hateful defeat at the finality of everything he'd just said, but it didn't really matter, because somewhere around the bit about the fridge, Dennis had gone so limp that only the heaving of his chest promised that Colin hadn't killed him. They stayed there on the floor, facing each other but not risking eye contact from across the chasms of their own wreckage for what seemed like an age, then Dennis was the first to move, standing up and going into the bathroom without a backward glance.

A moment later, he re-emerged, holding a wet facecloth out to Colin. "Wipe your face." The gesture was kind, but his voice was empty, robotic, his movements stiff, his eyes so dead and distant they seemed made of doll's glass. "You're upset."

"I'm sorry, D." Colin took the cloth, wiping his face and getting to his feet. He was hesitant at first, but Dennis made no move to object or pull away when he wrapped him in a tight, fiercely apologetic hug. There was no objection, but there was no return either, not even an awkward squirm at the show of affection. It was like hugging a mannequin instead of a boy, and Colin let go, pulling away to frown in sudden, fearful concern at the smoothly mask-like serenity of his brother's face. "Dennis…?"

"You're just upset." Again, he spoke without emotion, reading from a script too distant and irrelevant to be worth his notice. "Mum and Dad are fine, you misunderstood, and you're upset. We'll go to bed, and we'll ring home tomorrow and sort it all out."

"It's not…." He started to argue, then stopped, shaking his head with a defeated slump of his shoulders as he turned away from the utterly blank eyes. It was no good. It was shock or denial or something like that, and he just didn't have the energy to fight it right now. He was tired, exhausted to his very bones at a level he had never known was possible before.

It was like watching Lal before the emotions had kicked in, a beautifully sculpted but poorly programmed replica of a human boy who took off his shirt and shoes and belt, who pulled back the covers and climbed into the bed and lay flat on his back even though he'd slept curled on his side since he was a baby, staring up at the ceiling and not seeming to see it at all. "You're just upset," he repeated again, quieter this time. The eyes that were just a little bit deeper blue than his own shut, and there was a single shiver that ran the length of the lump beneath the cheap coverlet. "We'll ring them in the morning and sort this all out."

Maybe it made him a bad brother, maybe all of this made him a bad brother, but Colin just nodded, pulling the spare blanket from the tiny nook that acted as a coat closet, retrieving his wand from the bathroom, and making a sort of nest against the door. They had an inside room by his request, no window for a sudden break-in, everything the hotel had to bolt was bolted, and it wasn't likely the door or the locks or even Colin himself would be much impediment to the people they were afraid of, but the gesture made him feel a little better.

It was the coward's choice, he had no illusions about that, but courage, he had discovered, could be as finite as strength and energy, even in someone supposedly so young that all of those should have been boundless. It didn't matter. None of the supposed to be's mattered any more. He would let it go for now. Let them both sleep, and then in the morning, they'd sort it all out.


	3. Charlie X

They were both well-trained by the schedule of Hogwarts, and they got up within five minutes of each other at six o'clock sharp with no need for alarms or wake-up calls. The first part of the morning passed as if between strangers rather than brothers, neither boy wanting, perhaps daring to be the first to speak. It was the automatic motions of two hundred and seventy mornings a year for six years for Colin to re-dress in his uniform, even knotting the tie and adding the scarlet and black outer robe with its gold-plated clasp and embroidered lion patch without considering that no one was there to enforce dress code at the cheap little motel.

It seemed as though the world should be screaming, but the morning news made it seem like any other day. The Asian stock markets were having a crisis, there was some kind of coup or rebellion in Nigeria, Man U was slipping badly in the league, the new Spice Girls song was flying up the charts, and here coming up were six clever ideas for Christmas centerpieces with rubbish you probably had about the house. Empty, overly made-up faces with perfect diction saying things that told him nothing about how someone who had been a boy with a lot of responsibility on Friday night was supposed to be a man on Sunday morning.

He poked at the empty pizza box as Dennis showered. It was his job to make sure there was breakfast, even if he wasn't hungry, but he didn't feel right about leaving the motel until they had something more certain figured out for next. Checking his pocket change, he tapped on the bathroom door and told Dennis he was going to be back with breakfast, but there was no answer except the water running, so he left a note to be sure. The last thing Dennis needed was for him to just up and vanish too.

There wasn't a café or restaurant attached to the motel as he'd hoped, but he found a vending machine, and maybe it still fell under the category of being a cool brother rather than a parent to not be all up about proper nutrition just yet. Allsorts, crisps in roast chicken and cheesy onion, Twiglets, Weggs, Rainbow Drops, a couple cans of Pepsi and he was out of change and out of hands and it was maybe too much or not enough, but it didn't really matter because it would have to do.

The strange noises as he neared their room made him almost drop the snacks and snatch his wand to the ready, Trace be damned, but at the last instant he hesitated, frowning. Those were not the sounds of someone being attacked or crying. They were more like…

Feeling himself turning rapidly what he knew must be a very impressive beet red, he fumbled the makeshift breakfast quickly to one hand, unlocking the door and shouldering it open without bothering to knock. "DENNIS JOSEPH CREEVEY!" The source of the noises was obvious now: two Japanese women in microscopic black vinyl schoolgirl skirts and nothing else going at each other with a spray can of whipped cream on the telly. Colin dropped the food on the bed, lunging to turn it off at once.

"Dad would  _kill you_ if he knew you were -" He stopped, noticing to his confusion that Dennis didn't appear to have been…well,  _enjoying_ himself. His trousers were still fastened, his face still empty as he cocked his head placidly at Colin's consternation.

"Wasn't expecting it. Just looking for something other than the news." He didn't seem embarrassed, caught, defensive, anything at all, and that was, Colin realized, a lot worse. It was weird enough now trying to navigate between the older brother who had made it clear that he could get ahold of Those Kind of Magazines now that Dennis was old enough to start needing and wanting them with the supposed-to-be-parentish-figure of less than a day who thought it was a bit too soon for lesbian hardcore. But what the hell were you supposed to do when the fourteen year-old didn't  _care_ about the porn?

"I…uh…um…" he tried to hide his bafflement and worry by re-bolting the door, jerking his head awkwardly back to the pile on the bed. "I've got brekkies, sort of. Food, anyway. Well, sweeties and…shit, D, never mind. There's stuff. You can eat it."  _Just brilliant, Colin, you bell-end,_ he thought bitterly,  _you've really got this guardian thing down, don't you?_

Dennis still showed no trace of emotion, made no motion towards the brightly colored pile. "I want to ring home."

Colin sighed, slumping forward to thud his head against the door. "Dennis, please…."

"I want. To. Ring. Home." There still wasn't what you could properly call feeling, but it was definitely not a request, and really, what would be the point in arguing? It wasn't as if it was going to make a difference, and if it made him feel better, wasn't it only fair? Just because Colin had seen what was in the house didn't mean that he could just make that reality sink in for his brother through some kind of mind meld, and maybe he wouldn't want to if he could. Maybe getting no answer on a weekend morning was so much kinder.

He smiled in what he hoped was a gently supportive sort of way, crossing the little room to sit next to Dennis and nodding to the phone. "Okay, then. But, D, I just want you to know that I wasn't playing some kind of trick. Mum and Dad are -"

"I know," Dennis interrupted him tersely. "I heard you last night." It was a flicker of the first sign of anything, but it was little more than annoyance, as if Colin had been reminding him for the fifteenth time of overdue homework rather than the murder of their parents. "You're wrong. Just let me ring them and we'll sort it out."

There was nothing to do but sit next to him as he dialed, ready to catch him in a flood of tears or answer questions or absorb a punch or whatever he could do, was needed to do. Dennis had the grimy plastic receiver tucked against his shoulder, both hands just sitting loose in his lap, and in the suddenly heavy silence of the room, he could hear it ring faintly once, twice, three, four times.

His father's voice startled him, hit him with a lightning bolt of hope and grief that sent his hand flying to his mouth to catch both the inadvertent cry and the sudden resurgence of the hideous memory of the smell. For a single wonderful, heartbreaking, impossible moment he thought maybe Dennis had been right after all, maybe he'd somehow been wrong and they'd just been wounded and got away and come back…but no. Not at all.  _…have reached 20-8579-5247. We're on an away mission right now, but hailing frequencies are open, and if you leave a…_

Slowly, carefully, Dennis set the phone back on the cradle, turning to meet his brother's eyes with an expression of such utter disbelief that it seemed as though the world had fallen off its axis. "There's no Christmas message."

He wanted to lie, to take back everything from the night before, but it was too late, and he just shook his head, biting his lip to bite back his own grief. "No, D, there's no Christmas message."

The blonde head fell, the still-child's hands rubbing fretfully against his thighs. "No Christmas message. There's  _always_ a Christmas message."

"D…" Colin reached out to lay a hand against his brother's back in comfort, but a sharp pop of static jerked him back, hissing in pain. "Watch it, there, you're -" he cut off as the sensation of rampant power grew stronger, every hair on his head standing on end, his clothing suddenly clinging and crackling. A sharp, metallic reek of ozone began to fill the room, joined almost at once by the ominous smell of melting plastic and dying electronics.

"Dennis, stop it!" There was no attempt to hide that he was beginning to panic, and he grabbed the boy by both shoulders and shook him hard, ignoring the hot, prickling, burning sensation in his palms, the shivering shriek of the nerves up his arms and the answering turbulent jitters of his own magic. The lights began to flicker. The television made a thin, whining sound of things building past their tolerance. "STOP IT!"

Dennis didn't hear him or didn't care or maybe he couldn't hear him at all. He was a sickly, ghostly white-grey, his lips tinging blue, his hair beginning to singe, but his eyes were beyond vacant, beginning to roll back in his head as it lolled loosely against the desperate attempts to bring him around. His lips moved, soundless at first, then a faint, barely breathed whisper. "No…"

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, DENNIS, STOP IT!" Colin let go and hauled back, slapping him across the face as hard as he could. The handprint showed red against white for a split second, then it was gone, and there was no other reaction, no sign of anything. The telephone shuddered, warped, melted into a puddle of plastic with an archipelago of mutilated metal bits. The surface of the pressboard nightstand was beginning to blister.

He was sobbing now; terrified, helpless, certain he was watching his brother killing himself and God only knew what else about to happen. The younger boy's eyes had gone completely white now, his spine rigid, his limbs twitching oddly, the electricity coming off him in visible arcing fingers of Force Lightning that weren't cool, weren't cool  _at all._

Smoke now, the soles of Dennis's shoes were melting, and he grabbed the can of Pepsi, feeling like an idiot as he dumped the soda over his brother's feet just as they started to burst into flame. The light fixture on the wall went up next, sending up shockingly thick clouds of smoke and setting the smoke alarm screaming. "Jesus, Dennis,  _please!"_ Colin couldn't help backing away, couldn't touch him any more, looking around in horror at the room disintegrating around them, in so far so quickly over his head. "Come on, mate…now's not the time to go all Charlie McGee on me here…."

The television blew out, throwing glass across the room like the shrapnel of a grenade, then it twisted, sagged, began to burn. The room was filling with smoke, burning his eyes, his throat. Colin yanked the collar of his robe up over his mouth, trying frantically to think if there was any way, any way at all he could carry Dennis  _and_ the bag, how the fuck they were going to get out of there, if grabbing his brother would send  _him_ up like a roman candle, if he was strong enough to block it, if he even knew what he was trying to block in this mad, raw, primal release of the staggering power that had always seemed so much less scary when it was controlled, channeled through a…

 _Oh, Colin, you MORON!_ He grabbed his wand from his belt. How he'd forgotten that he was a wizard too…it didn't matter. He jabbed the instrument at Dennis, shouting the spell with all his strength. "STUPIFY!"

The jet of scarlet shot from the tip of his wand with blinding ferocity…and rebounded as if off the shields of a Warbird, nearly striking him before blowing a hole in the plaster of the wall already beginning to smolder behind him. There were several more small fires now, it was getting hard to breathe, but then there was a series of loud cracks from outside the room, and within a heartbeat he wished that it had just been more televisions blowing to kingdom come.

Shouting, pounding, doors being broken, screaming. Death Eaters. The Trace. Oh shit oh shit oh shit THE TRACE, and was it his spell or Dennis' blind whatever the fuck it was it didn't matter because they were coming, there was no way out, they were dead fucking sitting ducks and he was trapped in a burning room with a little brother who was maybe dying maybe just completely crazy but dangerous as hell and he couldn't touch him had to protect him yelling getting closer now maybe two doors away sirens outside fire brigade or cops or….

Something in his head seemed to suddenly snap, and it was like falling through ice into a frigid black crush of a universe that was never supposed to have happened but where choices didn't exist any more. The only way out was to Apparate. He didn't know how. He'd only seen it twice, only heard the older kids talk about it now and then, but it didn't matter any more than if he'd been thrown behind the wheel of a runaway lorry. He had to at least try. Maybe they'd die, but a maybe was better than the dozen kinds of certainly they were standing in the middle of now.

The bag didn't matter. It wasn't their stuff now, it was their lives, but when he reached for Dennis, a wave of energy arced off of him with such strength that it knocked Colin to his knees, gasping for air that more and more just wasn't there in the heavy clouds of smoke. Eyes streaming, coughing so hard he was almost retching, he grabbed the lamp off the side table, not even really thinking what he was doing, operating on instincts he'd never even feared he had.

The heavy brass base, already warping like putty, connected hard with the side of Dennis' head, and the storm stopped as he fell, boneless, to the charred bed, everything seeming bizarrely silent even in the cacophony of screams and shouts and crackling fire and shrieking alarms. He was bleeding, bleeding a  _lot,_ but there was no time to think about it.

Colin scooped the limp figure up in his arms, clutching him tight as the door to the room blasted apart in a hail of splinters. The locks hadn't meant anything after all, and there was a woman there with mad eyes and black robes and a maelstrom of black curls who was aiming a wand at him in a way that he knew meant a very painful death for both of them if he failed.

He closed his eyes, turned on the spot, and prayed like hell.


	4. A Taste of Armageddon

It was nothing like how he'd imagined being beamed would be. Every bit of him felt squeezed, crushed, torn apart and forced together in the blackness that was full of all the impossible colors that came when you pushed on your eyes, and he clung to his brother with arms that weren't even really arms any more. He tried to focus on where he'd wanted to take them, to the last moment idea that had flashed through his head, but his heart was wrapped around the younger boy as if carrying him through an inferno swaddled in a wet blanket.

Then it was over, and he felt like he'd just burst out of Willy Wonka's tunnel, except this was no magic chocolate factory. It was so much better, though. He'd made it. Maybe there was a God after all that occasionally had mercy on the truly stupidly desperate, because this was his best mate's basement. Throughout their childhood, it had been the site of a thousand Jedi rebel hideaways, the Batcave, the headquarters of the X-Men, the caves of Helms Deep, but now it was the last place on Earth they'd look for them and the only other human being this side of the insanity who knew what they were.

" _BRAD!"_ Colin screamed his friend's name at the top of his lungs, not even thinking until it was too late what would happen if Mr. or Mrs. Schaeffer came instead. He didn't care. It didn't matter who helped them, because oh, God,  _someone_ had to. He'd made it, but he didn't feel very good - maybe something about the Apparation, maybe smoke inhalation - suddenly lightheaded and his arm was throbbing awfully beneath the weight of a brother who, he suddenly realized, was only perhaps a stone and a bit lighter than Colin himself.

He tried to adjust the boy in his grasp, but his hand didn't seem to respond properly, and - oh, SHIT! Fuck, he'd dropped him, had he made it worse, had he hit his head again? Colin fell to his knees, reached out to check Dennis' head, try to staunch the bleeding on the wound already there…. "BRAD! GET YOUR FUCKING CUNT OFF THE COMPUTER AND GET DOWN HERE, THERE'S BEEN A -"

Everything seemed to stop, time itself coming to a stuttering halt as he stared, incomprehending at his right hand. No. No right hand. Just and arm and an elbow and three quarters of a sleeve and goddamn, that was a  _lot_ of blood. Blood never  _sprayed_ like that in movies that weren't playing it tongue in cheek like Nightmare on Elm Street, but it was spraying like a fucking SuperSoaker and how had that even happened and shouldn't it really hurt a lot more if it was real?

It didn't matter. It was getting all over Dennis and he needed to do something about it so he could help his brother. Colin looked around, wishing he'd somehow brought the bag even if he didn't know what he'd use in it, trying to remember what he knew of First Aid, but the knowledge seemed to be teasing him, dancing just beyond his reach and laughing that he'd fucked up, Dennis was going to die, and it'd be his fault, his fault, he'd failed, he'd -

Duct tape. There, on the table against the wall, a big silver roll of it, and that'd do. Colin jumped to his feet, reeling, almost falling before he found his balance again and hurried to the table, clutching his arm tight to his chest in instinctive protection of the severed limb. Walking was harder than he'd expected it to be. He felt half-drunk, but he couldn't allow that. He grabbed the tape, pulling the end free with his mouth, wrapped it as tight as he could just above the end of the stump; three, four times, then a few more for good measure.

He'd just torn it off with his teeth when he heard the door open, and while just crossing to the table had seemed a monumental task a moment ago, now it was remarkably nothing at all to be standing over Dennis, wand out, wounded arm hidden back in the black folds of the robes, and there was a sound like an animal snarling that it took him several seconds to realize was coming from him. It was several more before he recognized the figure descending the stairs, and the relief was so intense it was like a kind of dying.

"Brad! Oh thank fucking God you're home!" Colin knelt, dropping the wand and using his good hand to carefully, tenderly turn his brother's head, check his breathing, check his pulse. "We're in trouble, Brad, we're on the run, our parents are dead, D's been hurt." He still smelled of fire and ozone, his skin too clammy, but he was alive, and Colin ran his fingers gently over the rounded cheek, wiping away the blood as best he could. "He's hurt bad, and it's my fault."

Brad was still stopped halfway down the stairs, gaping at the two brothers as if they were utter strangers, looking more and more like he was going to be sick. "I'll…oh, fucking hell, I'll go call triple nine!"

Colin felt a surge of frustration that his friend could be so stupid, that he didn't understand, that after years of playing war he didn't seem to get that the real thing had come now and it was time to  _do something._ Except he'd always been like that, always needed to be told everything, and it honestly didn't matter what it did to feelings or friendship right now as he lashed out with the clipped, unwavering bark of the sixth-year Gryffindor Sergeant. "No! You tell no one we're here! Get the first aid kit. I need bandages, iodine. When we've done his head, you're taking the car and you're going to drive us out to Devonshire and I'm going to contact some people."

"What is this?" Brad's voice was tight, panicky, not at all soldierly. "Oh, shit, shit, is that…is that  _blood?_ It is! Oh -" He went suddenly, starkly white, grabbed the railing and doubled over it, sicking all over the concrete floor below. When he could stand up again, he was shaking, trying to back away up the stairs as if he could unsee it all. "That's a lot of - yeah, I gotta call the - you're not - this isn't - blood, holy fuck, that's so much fucking  _blood…."_

Colin was about to yell at him again, to order him to snap out of it and act like a fucking man, a soldier, but as Brad looked up at him from his desperate hunch, he suddenly realized that he wasn't a man, he was a boy, a civilian, a normal person in a world gone to hell six times over, and he forced his voice to soften, his lips to smile. "Oh, don't be a pussy, mate. It's…it's not even mostly ours." Lies, he was learning, spun surprisingly easily when the stakes were high enough. "It's from the bad guys we were fighting."

Brad's eyes doubled in size. "Are they -"

"No, no they're not here," Colin amended quickly. "We got away. But you've gotta keep cool. Cucumber on ice, man. Fucking Spock all the way. I need you to be awesome right now. Can you do that? For D?"

A slow, faint nod, a look Colin now knew for shock slowly settling over his narrow features, but that was okay. Shock was better than hysteria any day. "Yeah, okay."

"Great. You're the best. Just go get me the stuff for his head, and we'll take this one step at a time." Brad nodded, turned, hurried up the stairs so fast he almost fell, then the door shut behind him and the brothers were alone again.

Colin slumped to the concrete floor, suddenly so very tired, and it would be so easy to just curl up next to Dennis and wait, sleep maybe…but he knew he couldn't allow that. They weren't safe yet, not really, and they were just too exposed out here in the middle of everything. He needed to get them somewhere more defensible, or at least as close to that as possible.

Gathering all the strength he had left, he slipped his good hand under his brother's head, gritting his teeth and ignoring the blinding flash of agony as he pushed the remains of his other arm beneath the boy's knees and lifted him one more time. It was so much harder now, it seemed impossible that he'd been able to just snatch him up like that at the hotel because he was so very, very heavy. Slowly, too slowly, he made his way to the furthest corner of the basement, lowering Dennis to the floor as if he were made of spun glass, and then his head was spinning as he swayed to his feet again.

He meant to stand guard, ready to fight again, but just  _standing_ was everything, even if it was mostly leaning against the wall, breathing so hard he was sure Brad could hear it upstairs, that the Death Eaters could hear it from wherever they were. It hurt so much. He didn't feel good.

Three cracks rang through the basement like gunshots, and Colin's heart sank. They'd been found. They were going to die now, because he sure as hell couldn't put up much of a fight, and it had all been for nothing. He shouldn't have tried to go home, he shouldn't have…there were so many shouldn't haves that none of them even mattered. Nothing mattered now. He'd given his everything to save his brother and now they'd been found too soon and they were going to die.

Except these Death Eaters were different from the other ones. They weren't in the black robes, they were in what looked like fancy party clothes, two women and a man, and they looked familiar somehow. As if he knew them from the vast, fading before time. The way they stood seemed familiar too, back to back the way they'd learned in the DA, and the pretty one in the white dress had hair just like he thought Bones might have if she ever let it out of the damned plait. Nice hair. Was it better that he was going to be killed by a pretty girl with nice hair?

Another crack, another figure appeared, another man in a dinner jacket, as bizarrely familiar as the first lot. He turned, surveying the room with a trained, practiced eye, frowning in seeming confusion at his surroundings. "Where's Colin?"

It surprised him to hear his first name like that, and the voice seemed like he should know it, know it well, but before he could find an answer, the taller of the two women replied. "I don't know. We Apparated to him like you said, but we wound up here."

The voices, the faces seemed to meander slowly, aimlessly through his brain, but when they eventually met up with names, he heard himself let out a tiny gasp of hope and horror. It wasn't possible, it couldn't be them, because that would mean help, real help, thingsmightreallybeokay help, and that was too much to be allowed. It had to be a trick, but if it wasn't a trick, they might be able to save Dennis, and if it was, they were dead anyway. Taking a deep breath, he tried to sound strong, intimidating, but the voice he heard instead wasn't at all. "Prove who you are."

"Neville Longbottom," the newcomer answered, "I tripped and fell coming through the Gryffindor portrait hole last week, and Colin Creevey laughed and told me that it wasn't very inspiring or noble to land on my face like that. I've been at Gretna Green with my friends; Hannah, Ernie, and Susan, who are also here, and we came because a colt Patronus sent us a message."

Colin felt his heart start pounding so hard that it made his arm throb, made him dizzy. It couldn't be, but that was Neville's face, the dark hair with the little bit of grey at the temples, the way he stood, always with his shoulders a little tucked since the flogging, his unmistakable Dales sound, and that was…that was Lieutenant Macmillan with him, and Second Lieutenant Abbott, and Bones, and he had won the bloody lottery here, which he really should have been more excited over, if excitement wasn't so very much effort.

The Commander had said something about a Patronus, though, and he didn't remember sending one, but it didn't matter. He could figure that out later, because now there might be a later, if for Dennis at least, and that was all that mattered. He was starting to doubt there would be a later for him. He really didn't feel good.

"Okay." Colin pushed off from the wall, forcing himself to take a step forward to where he could be seen, and he nodded back towards where his brother lay, a barely visible and too-tiny heap on the floor. "Dennis needs help, please…I…I had to hit him really hard."

God bless the DA. No puking, no crying, no freaking out about the blood. The Commander just went right to him as if he knew exactly what to do, and of course he did, and of course he was strong enough to just pick him up as if he weighed nothing, taking him to the brightest part of the room and setting him down with no sign of effort at all. There was a kind of peace settling over him now, a warmth that was odd, because the basement was if anything a little chilly, and he'd started shivering. The Commander looked back at him, and there was no accusation there, no panic, but just enough worry. "What happened?"

He replied at once, not even considering hiding the truth, so glad he didn't need to. "When we got home, I went inside on my own. The house stank of rotten food. There weren't any bodies, but there were scorches on the walls, a little bit of blood, and…and the Dark Mark on the bedroom wall. I took Dennis to a motel. Told him. He didn't seem to care, but the next day, he wanted to call home. I told him again, but he still called. There wasn't…there wasn't a Christmas message on the machine."

He was breathing harder now, it irritated the throat that he was only now beginning to realize was so raw from the smoke, but he forced himself to go on. It should have been easy, but it wasn't, not at all, and it was getting harder. "He just sat there, staring at the phone, but the room started shaking, and the telly blew out. I tried to stop him…"

Sweet Millenium Falcon, what was wrong with him? He tried to remember, it had only been moments ago. Or days? He didn't know any more. Mel Gibson had been there with two Japanese - no, that was wrong. Had Dad? No, he wasn't sure. It should have been so easy. It had just happened, why did it seem like trying to remember the plot of a movie from years ago seen once while dozing off and high on cold medicine? "…started screaming that they hadn't even done anything, they weren't even in the wizarding world, and the lamps started to go, and I begged him to stop, to calm down, but I had to…I had to hit him, and it was too late. The Trace…I could hear them coming down the hall, blasting in doors, people screaming, they were looking for us. I sent the message and came here. I didn't know what else to do."

Was that right? Maybe. Some parts of it seemed mostly right. Had he been screaming or Dennis or was it in his head or had he wanted to scream or did it matter? Had he sent a message? They said he had. So he had. Would they still help Dennis if it wasn't? Would he go to jail for lying if he didn't know if he was or not? He was very cold now. Maybe they'd turned down the thermostat for Dennis. Maybe it was good for head wounds.

Someone's voice came from far away, a man's voice, and he probably should have been able to tell Lieutenant Macmillan from the Commander, but it didn't really matter. "Are you okay?"

No. No he wasn't, not at all, but if he said that, they'd pay less attention to Dennis. He needed them more, and Colin forced himself to what he prayed was something at least a little bit like a smile, to sound something at least a little bit like casual. "I'd never Apparated before. Haven't even taken the classes yet, I've just heard the older guys talking about how to do it. Splinched myself a little, but I'm okay. It just stings." And it did, really. That part at least wasn't a lie. It had stopped hurting all that much, which meant he'd overreacted, and it was hard to remember why he'd thought it such a big deal in the first place. Lots of people lost limbs. "Just take care of Dennis, please."

The Commander nodded, still examining the wound on Dennis' head. "Where is here?"

"My friend Brad's house. He's a Muggle, but he's been my best mate since I was like three. It's his basement. He knows I'm here. I had to kind of tell him I –"

Banging noise. Was it bad? Did it mean they had to fight? He looked around, trying to find where he dropped his wand, but then Brad's voice came loudly from the other side of the door at the top of the stairs. "Dammit, Colin, don't lock me out! I've got the stuff for D's head!"

He nodded, agreeing that it was very important to have those things, but before he could argue that he hadn't locked the bloody door in the first place, the Commander had already waved his wand at it. "Alohomora."

Brad shoved through at once, stopping in surprise as he saw all the new people in the basement. "Well, fuck!" He had the supplies though; a handful of cotton wool and a bottle of iodine, and that was all that mattered."They're with me," Colin explained quickly, fumbling for the vocabulary of a lifetime past to explain his current disaster in a way his friend could accept. "Other Mages, like I told you I was. The tall one's Neville. The big bloke's Ernie. The girl in the wedding dress is Susan. The one in the blue dress is Hannah. They're all Lawful Good Fighters. They teleported here like I did."

All his friends were introducing themselves to each other now. It was nice, like a party. Maybe they could have a Christmas party. They already had lots of shiny red stuff. Dennis would be okay, so he could make soup. Soup was nice and he was good at it and it was important for Christmas, but they couldn't use the big pot, because that was at home with the sink and the flies and he was sick, everything was warping and twisting. Maybe he'd eaten a fly. Maybe he was turning into a Brundlefly. Or would it be a Creeveyfly? Things had fallen off already. His hand was gone. But that was okay. Flies didn't have hands. Wings would be nice.

They were still talking. Upset. There was a problem. That didn't make sense. They were supposed to come and fix the problems. They needed a place to take Dennis, but hospital wasn't allowed. Maybe they'd already fixed his head and he didn't need hospital? That was probably it. Just somewhere to stay, then. Not home. Home was nasty. Brundleflies and monkeycats and smelled like the Toxic Avenger plenty of blood enough for a Troma picture wasn't there? Not home. Not hotel, they'd burned it up burn baby burn and they couldn't stay here but Ginny had said what had Ginny said? She had a house that was nice to people. Bag End, Bajor, Burrow? Burrow. "What about the Burrow?"

Maybe he'd said something wrong, because Bones had a funny look on her face as she came over to him, reaching out.  _Please don't touch me, I don't feel good. I don't want you to get sick._  But she did touch him, and now she was hurt too, she'd caught it, it was all over her, and everyone was getting upset, and they were going to hurt him, hurt Dennis again, stop helping. The Commander had gotten up. He was going to leave, abandon Dennis because Bones had caught it from him and he couldn't be bad like that.

He tried, he tried to argue. He tried to fight back or get away or leave so they had no choice but to let him go and help his brother keep his arms from falling off because he…he…

He didn't feel good, not at all, but through it all, Colin had one last, split-second moment of clarity in which he realized, to his surprise, that he'd never actually passed out before and this is what it must be like.

It sucked.


	5. Devil in the Dark

It was like the worst hangover ever. His head was thick, throbbing, his mouth so dry that there was nothing to swallow beyond the desperate need to, his tongue like jerky rasped over lips that were rough and half-numb. The nausea was a living thing in his throat that crawled and swelled, but there was less than nothing in his stomach to offer appeasement. He was shivering with cold inside skin that was too small and clammy with sweat, and he squirmed, trying to get away from himself, trying to find enough something to get it together enough to call for his mother.

Colin was sick,  _really_ sick, and he needed medicine or tea or soup or even just hugs, because somewhere in the sick was a worse sick of faintly remembered panic and wrong and very, very bad things. There was a faint sound of shifting cloth somewhere nearby, and he forced his eyes to open despite the quivering, stabbing shaft of aching light that brought, because maybe she was already there, and he needed her so bad as to be worth the cost, but when the cloying dancing starburts settled from his vision, it wasn't his mother there at all.

It was a young woman, a stranger maybe in her early twenties, her kind of pretty face squinched up in concentration as she muttered and worked over something lower down on the bed. She was dressed, bizarrely, like one of those punk grunge girls who hung out by the record store every time a new band came out with something loud and angry that they were smugly proud no one else had ever heard of and wasn't on the radio, with a ripped leather jacket held together with too many safety pins and a livid scream of hair twice as bright as a phone box. Maybe he would have frowned if his face hadn't seemed so numb, but he must have shifted or made a noise or something, because she looked up, clearly startled.

"Oy there, awake now are you, ducks?" The cockney was not nearly as much a surprise as her hair suddenly shifting to a soft denim blue as she looked up, and he blinked hard, suddenly sure he was hallucinating. He tried to exclaim over it, but all that came out was a raspy sort of grunt that wasn't anything at all and certainly wasn't  _what the hell just happened to your hair, where's my mother,_ or  _do you have any idea how much crap I feel like right now?_

"Hesh, don't try. You're still half under and you've lost a lot of blood." She ran a hand over his head, the gentle contact making him shiver so hard he dry-wretched, and Colin pulled away, wanting to tunnel down into the soft pile of bedding until he didn't exist anymore and definitely no one could touch him. Thankfully her hand was already pulled away, and she was looking off into the blurry something beyond. "Molly!"

Colin closed his eyes, trying to grasp at the pieces of things that slowly seemed to be taking shape in the edges of the misery. Was it a good sign that questions like where the fuck he was or what the fuck was going on were starting to matter, or a bad sign that it seemed oddly like he somehow should have known already and maybe did if he could just remember what he knew?

Time decided that he was boring and wandered off, maybe taking more than a bit of consciousness with it, but then it ambled back around in time to stupidly persuade him to open his eyes again, and this time the assault came with so much more light and a big fuzzy head thing. And pain. Wow. Fucking Death Star planet fucking killing drill into his fucking whole right side and where the SHIT had that come from?

He gagged, there was a straw in his mouth, he gulped it, gagged again, puked it, and now he was shaking with pain on top of the sick but someone was holding him who smelled and felt and petted like someone's mother but definitely wasn't his, and he licked his lips again, grateful for the moisture even if it was more than half disgusting stuff. "Did I make it..." he cut off, gagging again, but managed to gulp it back this time. "...to Rivendell?"

The big fuzzy orangish blob thing in the light shifted and became a kind-faced middle-aged woman with graying ginger hair who was definitely someone's mother. "I don't know about Riverdale, love, but you're safe. This is the Burrow, and I'm Mrs. Weasley, Ginny's mum. This here's Tonks, she's an Auror who's been helping take care of you since your friends brought you here, and we've got your brother too. Everything's going to be fine."

His friends? His brother? His brother. Dennis. Dennis hurt had to hit him blood everywhere the motel room things on fire had to run tried to Apparate blood everywhere missing hand tape hurt the Commander Death Eaters after them Dennis had lost his mindtoldhimfliescatstinkhouse... _parents._ There was a sound somewhere like a Tribble at a Klingon bachelor party that couldn't possibly be coming from him but was, because now he did remember and if wishes that he didn't were horses he'd be goddamned Ascot right now.

No one had come at the platform and they'd taken a cab home. He'd checked out the house, found the flies and the Dark Mark and taken what he could and they'd gotten a hotel, where he'd tried to tell Dennis but fucked it up so bad and found himself in a burning Kobayashi Maru. They'd gotten out, but it had cost him a hand and he'd had to hurt his brother, and then things just got fuzzy in a way that wasn't coming back and somehow wound up with him here, at Ginny's house, sick as a dog and trying not to scream for a hundred reasons only one of which was the increasing agony in what he now understood to be the unceremoniously amputated stump of his arm.

He couldn't say any of it, couldn't make the words happen, but Mrs. Weasley seemed to know and she scooped him up, holding him and petting his hair and saying things and making noises and smelling like bread and herbs and soap and window wash and lavender and tea and  _Mum,_ and was that so much better or so much worse? Her words wrapped over and around him like a hand-me-down coat, the things that mattered woven in and out and around the things that didn't make sense but mattered more.

Dennis was going to be fine. It was a minor concussion, no bleeding in the brain, he was sleeping normally in another room. They could stay here as long as they needed, it was a safe place, and they were going to try to do something for his arm, but they didn't have the potions that they wished they did, so he was going to have to be brave one more time. Colin yanked away, finding the now-familiar strength in sheer panic that so easily overcome sick or dizzy.

At some point while he'd been tucked into the ample comfort of the stained, limply ruffle-edged floral apron, other people had come into the room. There was Professor Lupin, Auror Shacklebolt, and Lee Jordan of all people, looking strangely out of place without the identical smirks of the twins to either side. They were holding things; a basin and cloths and flasks of stuff that stank and steamed and frothed, and they were giving him these looks of grim pity and resolve that made something deep in his gut turn into a tiny white dwarf of dense, so-hot-it's-cold destruction. Lee set his armload down on the table, putting out a tentative hand in support. "Colin, mate, you been through hell already, I know, but -"

Colin took a deep breath, smelling his own fear and pain and blood and sweat that was still half-strange in its adult mustiness and letting the blazing thing in his belly become an anchor. "If Dennis is sleeping normally, does that mean he could hear stuff and wake up?" His voice was still raw and faint and grated his throat like he was trying to breathe a sandstorm that would send a Jawa into hiding, but Mrs. Weasley seemed to understand him well enough to nod slowly.

"Yes..." She reached across him to take his left hand - what he supposed he'd have to start thinking of in a lot more of the singular - and tuck it between both of hers. "But I think right now he needs his sleep, Colin, and you're not really ready to get up yet yourself."

"No." He pulled his hand away and fisted it with as much of the covers as he could, bracing himself. "I just needed to know. Please get me something that won't break my teeth."

There was a long pause, then the younger woman - Tonks - nodded in what he was so grateful was real comprehension, unsnapping one of her fingerless leather gloves and folding it in half as she held it out. "'Ere. Bite down on this. We'll be putting a bit too much concentration on your arm for silencing charms, but no shame if you do wake 'im." Colin opened his mouth for it, tasting leather and Marmite and some medicinal sort of hand cream as he settled it between his teeth.

Mrs. Weasley had turned a bit pale, smoothing her hands over her knees in smaller, tighter, faster little passes. "I know you're a brave boy, Colin, no one's denying that. We all know what you did for your brother, but he's being taken care of now. It's not going to hurt him if you need to yell or swear or whatever you want to when we're doing this. No one's going to be cross with you, and you're not going to hurt him."

There wasn't any point in arguing with her. It was sweet, and he was sure that technically it was true, but none of that mattered. What mattered was that he'd already failed Dennis a half dozen times in less than two days, that he wasn't going to have him wake up to the sound of the only person he had left in the world shrieking his head off in another room of a strange house, and that if the Commander could do it, so could he. He shook his head, closing his eyes, clenching down on the glove and the coverlet and sliding down into the pillows so that his skull wouldn't crack the headboard if his back arched.

Someone with callused, certain hands took his right arm at the elbow, lifted it. He forced himself to keep it relaxed. Don't fight. The instinct to jerk away, to protect himself from the knowledge that this was going to hurt and the primeval need to guard the wound was so much stronger than he'd expected, and his whole body was shaking with the effort of fighting his own fight or flight. At some point, it had been properly bandaged, because they were unwrapping that now; he heard tape tear and felt the shouldn't have hurt that much whispers of gauze coming away to expose merciless air to raw flesh.

Carefully, he measured out his breathing even as it came in tight hisses around the glove, even as he had to ignore that he was drooling around it all down his chin and the taste and smell of it made him want to, need to retch all over again. Think of Dennis. Think of D.

Think of the first moment he'd dared show his brother what he could do, the touch of a charged finger to a boo-boo that had closed it like the magic it was. Think of the boundless joy on his little round face when he'd showed him how he made the lightsaber glow without batteries and jump into his hand from halfway across the yard, and when he'd discovered years later he could do it too. Think of the blanket forts where they wondered if they could go to Professor X's school and the letter that had come with the bloke who looked just like a wizard was supposed to that said they could go somewhere better. Think of him sopping wet and grinning because all the hating water in the world couldn't put a dent in so much awesome. Think of ice cream levitated back onto the cone and hands that lit up to scare away closet monsters and making the inside of the wardrobe snow and he was worth it, he was always worth it, he just had to hang on a little longer while they did whatever it was they were doing that seemed to involve horta sweat and Alien spit and a deep-tissue massage from Edward Scissorhands. X-Ray vision and Force Lightning and the Jedi Mind Trick when they needed to stay outside just a little longer. Just a little longer. Just a little longer.


	6. Court Martial

He had no idea how long it took, or what exactly it was that they did, and there was a part of Colin that wished he'd somehow been able to hold it together  _and_ watch, but honestly, he was willing to settle for just having made it through without screaming. Growing up, he had learned, meant compromises sometimes, but it was also, Mrs. Weasley assured him - though he didn't know how much to believe it or not - something he didn't have to entirely do just yet. At least not at the Burrow, and at least not any more than her own kids, who according to her went all the way up to a 28 year-old married Curse Breaker who still got checked for warm socks when he came here.

That made it better somehow, or at least okay enough that there wasn't any shame in being sweat-soaked and having bitten a hole in the glove, in finally getting to have numbing spells now that they weren't trying to figure out which nerves were still alive, in not being able to walk or being carried downstairs by Shaklebolt and wrapped in what seemed like every blanket in the county in front of the fire. There had been hot chocolate and some kind of really good stew with big chunks of vegetables and dumplingish bits and a lot of admiration of the new hand, which looked really white and didn't move or feel anything, but was still admittedly very, very impressive and the other bits, he was told, would come later.

As awful as it had been to live through, and as recent as it all was, it was a little strange how quickly it changed when told and re-told again for the various Order members who were coming and going through the rambling house. Well, the events didn't change, but the way they felt did. He wondered if this was how Bilbo had felt writing it all down after he was back in his own snug hole under the hill, if this was how all great adventurers felt when it came time for the songs and sagas, and if he would ever have one of his own, or if this was it; his crowning fifteen minutes of glory with a shiny new hand and a lot of leftover adrenaline and endorphins in the living room of a friend. It didn't seem to matter either way at the moment, and he let himself enjoy it, bantering it back and forth with the news of other adventures happening for the rest of the Order at the same time in the wider world beyond.

The stew was long gone and the hot chocolate a thin, sticky brown stain on the bottom of the chipped mug on the side table and he was halfway through the fourth - or maybe it was fifth - retelling when Ginny suddenly raised a hand to stop him. "Did you hear that? That schwerky noise? That's the upstairs bath finishing draining."

Colin tilted his head in equal parts annoyance and curiosity at the strange interruption. "Yeah?"

"The Commander's done," she clarified, getting to her feet and shoving her half-eaten bowl of stew into Lee's lap with an unthinking bluntness that spoke volumes to his honorary status among her hoard of siblings. "I'll go get him." Ginny was already half out the door to the hall, but she stopped long enough to beam back at him with one of her more knockout grins. "He's gonna flip his wand when he gets the full thing of it, mark me!"

Then she vanished, and there was a tight, expectant silence while they waited. Colin rubbed nervously at his new hand beneath the blankets, feeling the too-cool, too-stiff smoothness of it that wasn't really a part of him yet. He hadn't forgotten about the Commander, not at all, and he owed him at least as much thanks as he'd already given Ernie. Finding out what had happened after he'd passed out had been a shock at first, but there was a comfort in knowing his faith in the older DA hadn't been misplaced; his faith in the Commander least of all.

Then he was there, dressed in what were obviously borrowed clothes that almost fit, his skin still flushed from the bath and the ends of his hair still dripping a little as he stared at Colin with a very odd non-expression on his face. The Commander was never very demonstrative, though, and he figured it was probably strange to see him like this when he'd been left by all accounts half-dead in a pool of at least three people's blood on the kitchen table. "Colin..." he paused, as if the rest of the words were annoying him by being late. "...are you...did they find your hand?"

The question confused him for a moment, then he remembered that Lupin had said they'd gone looking for it while he was still unconscious, and he shoo his head, pulling his newly-regenerated limb from under the blankets. "No, but I'm feeling a lot better, really. You guys saved my life."

The Commander frowned, cocking his head in clear bafflement. "But if they didn't find it -?"

"We just did our best to regrow it," Tonks cut in. "Trouble is, we're Aurors, not Healers, and I guess I'm only much good at making one set of hands at a time."

Part of him knew that it had been a joke, but Colin felt abruptly embarrassed that she might think him anything but grateful that he had something other than a raw stump now, no matter what he'd done to her glove in the process. "It's ok, Mrs. Lupin," he assured her, pulling the hand back under the blanket, "I'm not -"

"Oy!" She snapped, though her eyes were teasing. "Don't call me that! Makes me feel ancient as well as huge! Tonks'll still do me fine, I told you."

Before he could apologize, Mrs. Weasley laughed, wagging a finger at the other witch. "Now, Dora, you're not huge, you're not even six months. You should have seen me with the twins...I told Arthur if I got any bigger, my belly would need it's own owl address."

"Point is," Ginny interrupted, resuming her spot near the fire and waving up at him, "they regrew it fine, but they can't get it to work, and they don't know why, so right now, it's just sort of a decorative end bit on his arm."

"I'm left-handed anyway, I can still do magic fine," Colin protested, not wanting the Commander to get the idea that this was going to take him out of commission with the DA. "And they said the proper Healers should be able to figure it out as soon as it's okay to go back to St. Mungo's, or if Madam Pomfrey can get a look at it once we go back to school."

"Well, that's good to hear." The Commander nodded calmly, but there was none of the relief in his voice that the words implied, and his face seemed set in worryingly disapproving stone. "But it's  _not_ all okay, Colin. You nearly died, and there was no good reason. What you did was incredibly stupid, and you're sitting there grinning like it was all just a lark. Your best friend has probably been killed by Death Eaters, Dennis - well, I don't know where he is - and you came  _this_ close to breaking the Fidelius Charm right when we're all scattered across the countryside and most vulnerable."

He didn't know what he'd been expecting to hear, really, but that was not it at all. True, they were almost all things that he'd said to himself a hundred times already, but he'd almost begun to believe the others when they said it wasn't true, that he'd done well, or at least the best he could. But now...and Brad! Was he really as good as dead? He'd been a fool, hadn't he, to think that if they were the ones the Death Eaters had wanted and they'd gotten away that he'd be all right. These were the people who had killed his parents just for the audacity of being a potential embarrassment. They didn't care. He'd just been trying to go somewhere safe, but the Commander was right. He'd signed a fucking death warrant on someone who should have never been touched by this war, someone he'd known since they were kids, and he'd been too much an idiot to even realize it.

His blood seemed to run cold again despite all the blankets, and he twisted the fingers of the new hand, wishing it hurt as he fought the growing lump of shame and horror in his throat. "I...I...I'm sorry," he managed finally. He hated that he was struggling, stammering, that he sounded so much a child, but at the same time he knew he deserved it all and it would be wrong to even try to pretend that he was better than this. "D-D-Dennis is sleeping upstairs with S-S-Sturgis watching him," he offered uselessly, as if the knowledge of that little salvage could bring Brad back from the wreckage of his mistakes. "'Nother Order bloke. They fixed his head."

He couldn't say anything more, his throat was too tight, but Ginny had jerked bolt upright from her lazy sprawl on the rug, her eyes blazing defiantly in misguided protectiveness. "What did you want him to do, Neville? Sit around and let the Death Eaters take them because he hadn't passed his Apparation test yet?"

Ginny's anger was something that usually sent most people backpedaling faster than a Wookie on a losing streak, but the Commander didn't even flinch. "No, but that nonsense about trying to hide how badly he was Splinched was inexcusable." He turned his attention back to Colin, and the brown eyes bored into him like phaser bolts. "You're the Secret-Keeper. When I explained that to you, I told you it might mean sacrifice, including your brother. You said you understood, but when it came down to it, you stood in the shadows and nearly bled to - no, scratch that, you  _did_ bleed to death, and you're only sitting there now because Ernie and I pushed a couple of pints of our own blood into you to replace what you let soak a dozen yards of fabric and half that basement. I want to know why I shouldn't lift the Fidelius now and put it on someone else."

The Commander was right, of course. When the shit had really hit the fan good and proper, he'd fucked up, done everything that had seemed like the only thing at the moment wrong, and if he'd done this badly when it was just telling his brother about something he'd had warning of, how could he think he could handle if the Carrows decided to really go digging for the secrets of the DA? He wasn't a hero, and the very fact that he'd been sitting here bragging as if it had all been some big glorious bullshit thing only rubbed that in. There was nothing brave or grown-up about panicking, and fuck if he hadn't done that over and over and over again.

There were no excuses, and he hoped the Commander would understand that he wasn't expecting forgiveness or to keep his position, but he knew he owed at the very least an attempt at explanation in obedience to the demand. "I didn't mean to let everyone down. I just...wasn't thinking." It hurt to say, but it was true, so different than the recent crap about  _I decided,_ and  _I thought._ He forced himself to continue. "My Mum and Dad...and my brother...and I just..." Colin swallowed hard, refusing to let his voice fade away into the whimper it wanted to. "...I guess I didn't want to believe I was bleeding  _that_ much."

"You'd lost a hand!" The Commander scoffed harshly in reply. "It should have been a clue when your uniform was wet to the knees!"

Oh, shit, he was crying now, there was no stopping it, but the shame of breaking down like this in front of everyone felt too earned to really fight. "I won't do it again."

"You bloody well won't. You only have one left...and I mean hand, life, and chance."

Colin had curled into the blanket entirely now, his whole head buried, and it was hard to breathe, but that wasn't really the smothering folds of the quilted fabric. It was the failure, crushing down on him in the sheer egotistical gall that he'd actually expected to be commended for killing a friend and damn near leaving the entire DA open to destruction. It was true, wasn't it, that he'd agreed to put the Secret first at whatever cost, and by endangering himself he'd endangered them all. If he'd died...but he hadn't, and even that what if was nothing compared to what had happened.

He heard someone else get up, and then Lieutenant Macmillan's voice, the Scot's burr dangerously rumbled around the edges of his usual affected pronunciation. "Wait a moment there, old chum...you're being really hard on the poor kid. He just lost - "

He was about to argue that it wasn't about what  _he_ had lost, but the Commander beat him to it, unaffected by his friend and officer's tone of warning. "We're all going to lose, Ernie, and some of us already have. It wouldn't do any good to say Hannah was excused because she lost her mother if  _she_  failed her duties, or because I lost my parents, or Harry lost his, or anyone else, for that matter. Colin failed, and he's going to have to make up for it and win my trust back, and it's really that simple."

It was incredibly generous of him to even extend the offer of making up for it, winning his trust back as Sergeant and Secret-Keeper, but that didn't change anything, did it? Brad was still dead, and there was no winning that back. Had it at least been quick? His thoughts sank back to the glimpse of the mad-eyed witch, and he realized with a slithering dread that it was almost certainly, by all descriptions, his Aunt Bellatrix, and he  _knew_ about her just as the Commander unquestionably did.

What in Roddenberry's name had Brad's parents found when they'd come home? Right now, there were probably police cars and caution tape and some Detective Constable trying to get through the tears enough to find out if Brad had been involved in a gang and being told no, not unless you count fan clubs, and we don't understand and how could this happen. There would be samples taken and investigations made, but it wouldn't matter, there would never be closure because they'd be looking in all the wrong places and at best they'd think their son was the victim of some random Clockwork Orange madness rather than a hero, a fucking hero so much more than his selfish moron of a coward so-called best friend...

"Now, I don't mean to bother you," the Commander broke into the uncomfortable silence in the wake of the remorseless truth, "but I haven't eaten in almost twelve hours. Would you mind if I grabbed a spot of leftovers or something from the kitchen?"

He'd obviously been talking to Mrs. Weasley, and she answered at once, so calm that it was almost,  _almost_ impossible to hear how much the realizations about her little 'guest' had affected her. "Of course, dear. Arthur will get something. Just give him a moment."

It was a very long moment of trying and not at all succeeding to hide the self-indulgent gulps of his sobs, wishing that he could erect a sign over his head that said  _don't feel fucking sorry for me, I'm not hurt, I'm hating myself._ But then there was the sound of the door opening again, Mr. Weasley's voice summoning the Commander to the kitchen, and it closed again to leave him once more the center of attention in a way he had been impossibly reveling in only minutes ago before he'd realized he was a murderer.


	7. Measure of a Man

There was a pause, not because he was waiting for the Commander to really be gone or even because it mattered any more, because it didn't. It was just long enough for him to find the air, for the little hitching gasps to give way to a huge, shameless sucking gulp, then another, and then Colin simply, bluntly, lost his shit. No, things didn't start going up in flames the way they had with his brother, but there was scarcely more control at all, and he hadn't cried - hadn't  _wept_ \- like this in at least ten years, howling with the only fist he could control clenched uselessly against his mouth until his nose was pouring and his face was hot and everything was wet and messy and so disgusting but it didn't even matter because he was disgusting, he deserved this.

He deserved to look like a child, deserved the uncomfortable circle around him of people that didn't know where to look or what to do except Mrs. Weasley who had half crawled into the chair behind him to hold him in a way that if he was a decent human being he would push off as not right or fair but he was too fucking weak to. So he let her stay and let her rock him and let the sobs come in rocking, wracking waves of guilt and loathing until they finally broke apart to let words come crawling wretchedly through the cracks. "I..I killed him, oh God, I...I fu...I fucking killed him. I never meant -"

"Do you remember Ed Henty, son?" Professor Lupin's voice was gentle, but he had always somehow been able to slice through the noisiest classroom without needing to raise it at all, and the three or four years since he'd last demonstrated the talent didn't seem to have dulled it. It acted like a glass of cold water dashed in his face without hurting at all, and Colin swallowed hard, scrubbing his face into the blanket as he tried to recover himself enough to answer because the other part of that surreally magical tone was that not answering was never an option.

"'Course." He took another deep breath, still unable to keep his voice from quavering, still shaking, still flushed and his chest hurt and his throat hurt and his arm was throbbing again at the join, but starting to almost get back on top of it at least a little. Besides, it would be just wrong if he didn't answer. Of  _course_ he knew Henty. Man was up there with Larry Burrows. "The photographer from Bishopsgate."

Professor Lupin smiled proudly, nodding and giving the little fisted gesture of triumph he'd always done in class when someone got something right. It had seemed kind of silly then, one of the dozens of eccentric things about the oldest youngest Professor they'd ever seen. Colin could have hugged him for it now. "The '93 incident, that's right." Lupin confirmed, "He heard the warnings, he knew the Met were evacuating the area, but he decided to do what journalists have done for ages and go running towards something when everyone else was going the opposite way. It cost him his life, but News of the World didn't kill him, and neither did the Met. The IRA were responsible, and so, in a way, was he."

Colin shook his head fiercely, twisting away from Mrs. Weasley's hand on his shoulder and hating that he was so tangled in the blankets that he couldn't jump to his feet in protest. "That's not the same!" he shouted. "If you want to put it that way, I'm the one drove the bloody truck into that basement, aren't I?"

"No, you're not." The Professor's rebuttal was calm but absolute. "You weren't really in control of that process any more than Dennis was; if you pardon me being blunt here you were both terrified but powerful kids working on instinct rather than any kind of real decision making, to the point you had a doppelganger."

Bones made a face, clearly surprised at the use of the word. "A what?"

"It's a raw magic phenomena that happens about as often as the spontaneous pyrokenesis Dennis also demonstrated for all of us." Professor Lupin had slipped fully into teaching mode, standing to pace the room with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his shabby tweed jacket. "When a witch or wizard is under extreme stress - usually to the point of impending death - a 'double' or ghost image of them sometimes appears simultaneously at another location, often pleading for help or warning close friends, comrades, or loved ones of some imminent danger or catastrophe."

"Beg your pardon, sir," Lieutenant Macmillan interrupted, raising his hand in the automatically trained gesture of school, "but that wasn't a double of Colin. That was his Patronus. I've seen it before."

"The entire point of a Patronus being in animal form is that it's oddly enough easier for people to visualize an animal we identify with closely than to come up with a clear image of ourselves...they basically  _are_ deliberate, harnessed, refined doppelgangers that have been fine-tuned over years of magical study to carry messages or otherwise act on the caster's behalf, such as utilizing magic against Dementors without having emotions or memories to be affected." He paused, turning to offer Colin a soft half smile. "Mr. Creevey just did his the old-fashioned way."

Mrs. Weasley cleared her throat, her tone sternly maternal. "Remus, we all appreciate the lesson, but I believe you left Colin - not his doppelganger - under the impression he murdered his friend."

The reminder, however gently meant, struck Colin with the force of a blow, and he barely managed to restrain the tears that threatened anew. "I did. I lead them to his house."

Professor Lupin shook his head, pulling one hand free to gesture sternly at him. "You didn't. You didn't know you were even going there, and you were very unconscious by the time Brad was making - and I emphasize that it was  _his_ choices - any choices about helping the others or protecting you." His voice softened, and there was a deep, sympathetic sorrow in his prematurely lined eyes. "Your friend gave his life for you, but that's not the same as you taking it from him. I'm sorry you have to learn the difference."

It didn't seem like a difference that mattered at all, and Colin felt the tears start to leak down his cheeks again no matter how hard he tried to blink them back. "This wasn't his fight."

"There's no such thing as a war without civilian casualties." Lieutenant Macmillan had crossed the room while he wasn't looking, and he lay one hand firmly on Colin's arm through the blankets, his hazel eyes gleaming gold in the firelight. "We just have to try and make damned sure they're not in vain."

"What about Dennis?" Colin protested, "I'm responsible for him now. I don't know if I could just let the Death Eaters have him, even if it was about protecting the DA. Does that mean I should let the Commander take it, because he's right, I screwed up a lot more than just Brad, I -"

"Stop right there." Abbott stood up, both hands on her hips. "Don't take a word of what Neville said, Colin. Just don't."

"He was  _right."_

"No, he wasn't," she insisted fiercely, "but more than that, I think I know him better than anyone else in this room, and I'm not even the only one who noticed that he was way, way off."

Colin shook his head, about to protest, but Mrs. Weasley's hand on his back stopped him with an unspoken authority. "Arthur and Kingsley are in there right now trying to figure out if it even is him, and if not, what's wrong with him."

He twisted to try and look up at her, but the blankets stopped him. "What do you mean?"

"That wasn't Neville," Ginny clarified, "or at least, not the Neville we're used to."

"You mean..." he paused, wishing he didn't feel like the only one in the room who wasn't getting this as he honestly tried to understand what they were getting at. "...a Polyjuice imposter, like fake-Moody?"

"Possibly," Hannah agreed, "or maybe he's just in shock. That's possible too. People do strange things when they're in shock, and he's not superhuman, Colin. He went from a wedding party to a bloodbath."

The thought of the Commander's strange, distant stoicism came back to him, and he felt suddenly so naive for not having seen it, even as the words themselves refused to extract their claws from his conscience. "I'm sorry."

It was a pathetic reply, useless, but bizarrely, Bones - no, he shouldn't call her that any more, she'd gotten married, why was that so hard to remember? -  _Mrs. Macmillan_ only laughed. "Your day was worse, don't apologize."

"I get it about the shock, though." Colin wiped his face again, trying to stay ahead of the tears that had thankfully slowed to barely a trickle. "I mean, I tried to tape my arm with  _duct tape_. That was fucking daft. I was wearing a necktie, and Corner taught us how to use those."

To his surprise, she didn't try to argue him, nodding instead in crisply matter-of-fact agreement. "Exactly."

There was another awkward silence, and Colin was relieved that at last he seemed to have stopped crying. He licked his lips, shifting in the chair to try and sort out what he had discovered was an awfully limb-cramping ball that he hadn't even remembered curling into. "What if it was him, though? ", he asked tentatively. "Because he was right about some of it. I did do some pretty fucking dumb shit."

"Then you -" Mrs. Weasley began, but she stopped as the kitchen door opened. The entire room seemed to hold it's breath until Mr. Weasley stuck his head in and Colin could feel her relax behind him. "- yes, Arthur?"

Mr. Weasley nodded only briefly to his wife, then looked directly past her to Colin, making him suddenly wish he hadn't uncurled so soon. "Colin, I've been talking to Neville, and he would like to apologize."

He pulled the blankets up around himself as if he could disappear, staring down at the lumps that were his feet and willing himself not to kick them in embarrassment like a kid called into the headmaster's office. "He doesn't have to, sir."

"Yes, he does. For some things you don't even know about. But it's up to you if you're willing to receive that apology, and no one is going to force you or think less of you if you're not feeling up to it right now." For all that he said there was a choice there, there wasn't, and everyone knew it.

Colin sighed, looking around as if someone would have another option even as he knew that there really wouldn't be. But at least maybe it could be a little less embarrassing this time, even if that was the coward's way out. "Can it...I mean, will you lot be offended if it's just us?"

"Of course not." Mrs. Weasley extracted herself from the chair behind him, straightening her skirts and apron with brusque efficiency as she glanced around the assembly. "Arthur, how about we switch? The kitchen desperately needs to be cleaned up anyway, and I don't see why all the people who helped make a disaster of it when they brought the boys in can't put their wands to getting the dirigible plum pits off the ceiling."

Mr. Weasley nodded with a hint of something in his smile that suggested he missed having a pile of children around the house to exact such revenge on. "Just one thing, Colin?"

There was no reason to feel like he was in trouble. Not with Mr. Weasley, anyway, and he'd said the Commander wanted to apologize of all things, but it was still a struggle to keep his voice in something other than a completely humiliating squeak as he answered. "Yeah?"

"If he's an arse again, you promise to tell me?" The question was not what he had expected, even if he didn't really know what he  _had_ expected, and he shrugged mechanically.

"Sure."

It was weird, awkward as hell to wait there in his cocoon in the chair while everyone else gathered up wands and made stilted goodbyes and platitudes that he didn't even really hear, his heart pounding so loud that it drowned out everything else as he struggled to for fuck's sake not panic again. He knew what Mr. Weasley had said, he certainly believed him, and he had deserved every word of the Commander's rebuke no matter what any of them said, so why was he so scared?

Maybe because he did know the Commander, did know that regardless of shock or whatever else, he'd been right, and an apology would only dig it in that everyone thought he had to be treated with kid gloves; that he was too young, too stupid, too fragile to be treated like a man and a soldier who had made a terrible mistake. Or several of them. Worse, maybe because everyone was right.

"Colin?" The Commander's voice snapped him out of the wallowing little mire of thoughts he'd started to wade into, but it also brought a fresh new wave of cold-sweat dread as he looked up.

"Commander, I -"

The older wizard looked bizarrely nonplussed, twisting his hands together and pigeon-toeing his feet in a strange flashback to the barely remembered days and years when he'd just been Neville. "Let me finish first? Then you can say whatever you want."

Colin shut his mouth, glancing away before he could be caught staring so incredulously at his commanding officer. "Of course, sir."

"I failed you, Colin."

Of all the things... "Sir -!"

" - let me finish." The Commander looked up, his eyes pleading, and in that moment, he  _was_ just Neville again, and that was perhaps scarier than all the shouting or lecturing or criticism in the world.  _"Please."_ He took a deep breath, then it all came tumbling out in a flood of genuine remorse and a self-loathing that sounded far, far too familiar. "I failed you before I even came downstairs, because I got so wrapped up in my stress and my worries and my issues while I was upstairs that I took some stuff I found in the medicine cabinet without even bothering to think what that would do to my ability to take care of you or the rest of my people if they still needed me. That's not even counting how irresponsible it was to take out of date potions that weren't even prescribed to me. I did that, and it put me out of my head so by the time I came down here, I wasn't seeing things clearly, and I was a bad leader, a bad person, and a bad friend in how I spoke to you. I'm sorry, as all three, and I'm asking your forgiveness."

The silence smothered the room, hot and thick, robbing the air of a world turned yet again upside down. There was nothing to say and only one thing to say, and Colin slowly, carefully untangled himself from the blankets, surprised to find that he wasn't as dizzy as he'd feared when he at last managed to get his feet beneath him and stand. The four steps across the sitting room were a gamble, the floor canting and spinning treacherously, but he did it, and he was glad he had as he extended his remaining real hand. "Of course I forgive you. You were at least part right, anyway. I panicked, a lot, and I got my priorities all screwed up."

Neville took it, shaking it more firmly than he had hoped, and there was an odd, unfathomable expression in his eyes of at least a dozen layered emotions that Colin understood all too well. "You could say the same for me."

"So we both fucked up, then." He didn't know how much longer he could stay standing, and it was all he could do not to turn the handshake into a handhold.

"Maybe," Neville admitted, then to Colin's relief he let go and took a seat on the nearest armchair.

It gave Colin every excuse to save pride and almost not collapse onto the ottoman nearby, as he nodded a little too quickly in agreement, the relief of it all maybe overpowering his better judgment - not that he'd ever had much of that, he knew. "I'm kind of surprised you haven't snapped sooner, you know? I've always thought I was pretty mature for my age and responsible because I manage a newsgroup and edit a 'zine and I'm a pretty good photographer and advanced in most of my classes and stuff, but that's not the same at all, is it? I mean, being Professor Sprout's darling boy and one of Harry's special mates -"

He stopped, horrified by what he'd just blurted out, but Neville was only smiling in a familiar, lopsided way. "No. It doesn't, does it? Not by a long shot."

So much had changed, for both of them. He wondered if it showed so much on him to others as it did on Neville, almost resenting that maybe it didn't. Secret-Keeper and Commander, and had it just been months ago that they had both been so definitely boys and just Housemates? He heard the tone of something not quite wonder in his voice as he searched for that person behind the now-graying hair and dark-circled eyes. "You're not that much older than me, are you, sir?"

He shrugged in the half-gesture that was all he'd been allowed since they'd torn his back to pieces. "About ten, eleven months, I guess."

Colin let out a small, self-deprecating chuckle, turning his hand over in the firelight to examine the slim, smooth fingers. "I guess I was just having a Doctor Who marathon while you queued up for puberty."

Neville blushed, running a hand over the stubble he'd obviously not bothered to clean up when he'd been upstairs in the bath. "Everyone's different. But you  _are_ growing up, Colin. You're definitely not a kid any more." He looked a little uncomfortable, as if unsure how to phrase it without causing offense. "I noticed when you got up at our first meeting to make that speech of yours. I mean, not in a  _noticed-_ noticed way, but -"

"No worries," Colin laughed despite himself. "I get it. Besides, you and Abbott..." He trailed off, catching himself before his mouth got him in trouble again and changing the subject. "Did you mean it about lifting the Fidelius?"

The sudden change of topic seemed to catch Neville a little off guard, but he recovered almost immediately. "If you want me to. I understand if you don't want to come back to school. If you need to take care of Dennis."

It was, for a moment, an intoxicating offer, but the brief fantasies of running away to New York or even moving in with his Aunt and Uncle vanished in a regretful shake of the head before they could even be allowed to get started. "We've  _got_ to go back, Commander. Anywhere we go in the Muggle world, we're as screwed as we were at that motel, and they've proved they don't mind collateral damage. Our only hope is to be surrounded by the kind of witnesses they think count."

Neville nodded solemnly, and he was greatful that he didn't try to push that part of the point further. "Do you still want to be Secret-Keeper?"

That one was harder, harder than he'd expected even a moment ago. The temptation was to say of course, to offer the most fervent assurances that he'd not fail again, but his other, newer responsibility that maybe he'd had all along weighed so much heavier now that nothing was easy, nothing was of course. Staying the Secret-Keeper would mean that Dennis was in danger, but they were both all ready in about as much danger as it was possible to get just by virtue of bloodlines they couldn't control at all, and what had running and hiding done but put even more people in the line of fire?

He stared at his hands, the one that was his and the one he still couldn't quite believe was, and when he spoke again, it was just above a whisper. "Do you think you can do it, sir?"

"What do you mean?"

"The DA. When we first talked about it, back when Seamus got himself beat up, you said if we could pull off a big enough stand we could end this, with or without Harry." He looked up, locking Neville's eyes intently. "Do you still believe it? Do you think we can make it? That  _you_  can?"

He was glad for the pause, the consideration that came before the small, almost frightened nod that still held so much confidence that it seemed to surprise Neville himself. "I do."

Colin nodded back, smiling ruefully. "A nice pickle we have landed ourselves in, Mr. Frodo."

The expression of regretful resolve came apart into absolute bafflement, and Neville blinked, cocking his head. " _What_?"

He decided not to explain, barely suppressing the chuckle that this was really not the time for. Explanations of Mordor could wait until they were a little closer to Mt. Doom. "Nevermind. I'm with you. Let's end this thing."

"Let's." Neville offered his hand again, but as Colin rose to shook it, gravity decided he had pushed things just a little too far and rebelled, pitching him sideways and almost onto the floor if the ottoman hadn't been there to rescue him from his own suddenly-boneless legs. The frustration and embarrassment and nausea battled each other in spinning waves as he heard Neville's voice from what was at least two rooms away. "Are you okay, Colin? Colin?"

He forced upright to happen, grabbing the edge of the ottoman with his good hand and trying his utmost not to sound at all at the end of his anything as he looked up with what he hoped was maybe not entirely open desperation. "I'm just...tired. Can I have a bit?"

And thank everything good that Neville understood,  _really_ understood, stupid Gryffindor pride and all, and he didn't make a big deal of anything as he helped Colin be actually centered on his seat before taking a step back. "Sure. Call if you need anything?"

"I will." The small exchange of smiles said everything else that needed to be said; apologies and assurances and promises and regrets and recriminations.

Colin watched him go, watched the door close all the way, waited to hear the murmurs from the other side, waited to make sure that it wasn't about to open again immediately before he gave himself the luxury of letting go just enough to slide slowly to the floor, his head lolling back against the padded seat as he closed his eyes, his lips barely moving with the recitation that had somewhere shifted from entertainment to oath. "We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space, and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here. This far, no further. And I will make them pay for what they've done."


End file.
